Innovation has always been at the heart of what we do at Avery Weigh-Tronix.

From inventing the world's first weighbridge in 1876, to ensuring a fairer deal for consumers by introducing electronic scales in 1971, we've been developing weighing solutions to solve customer problems for over 200 years.

As much as what we do is for our customers, it’s nice to be recognised for our hard work, and this year we’ve been nominated for three industry awards for our newest innovations; the Mobile Picking Solution (MPS), and the Revenue Protection Solution (RPS), both designed to solve issues within the warehouse, distribution and logistics industries.

Mobile Picking Solution

Pick operator miscounts within warehouse and distribution centres can result in losses of thousands of pounds a year in stock giveaways, correction costs and contract penalty charges. These miscounts are usually a result of human error and can be hard to prevent.

The Mobile Picking Solution (MPS) stops the 'accuracy or speed' trade off by bringing quality control to the point of pick. The MPS trolley includes a counting scale to eliminate the need for manual counting, and a colour touch screen display which provides easy to follow pick instructions. This delivers a pick accuracy rate of 99.75% by ensuring the pick operator is picking the exact part in the exact quantity.

Vaillant, a leading heating technology manufacturer, introduced the MPS into their pick process to stop production delays caused by incorrect picks coming into the assembly area from the warehouse. As a result, Vaillant saw a 4% improvement in cycle count accuracy and a 50% increase in count speeds, with no need to halt production as a result of short or incorrect picks.

The introduction of the MPS at Vaillant was such a success, the solution was nominated in the Innovation category of the UK Warehousing Association (UKWA) Awards and the Order-Picking Innovation category at the Supply Chain Excellence Awards.

Revenue Protection Solution

Freight operators rely heavily on consignment weight and size declared by shippers; however, the declared data is often inaccurate. Many shippers don’t have the correct equipment to accurately weigh and size large items and end up genuinely underestimating costs, but there can also be deliberate under declaration to save on shipping costs.

Freight operators must check the shipper declared data to ensure they are correctly remunerated for handling the item - this is referred to as Revenue Protection (RP). On average, the UK’s leading freight operators only revenue protect 46% of incoming freight, which results in hundreds of thousands of pounds in potential revenue being lost annually.

The Revenue Protection Solution (RPS) is a mobile weighing and dimensioning system designed to check heavy and large (H&L) freight. The system allows freight operators to revenue protect consignments as part of their natural process flow and also provides a full audit trail for each consignment which is found to be under-declared; allowing freight operators to realise 100% of the chargebacks issued and avoid customer disputes.

The RPS has successfully been implemented in the operation of a global express parcel & freight operator. This customer experienced a 68% reduction in RP processing time, and has completely eliminated freight standing time thanks to weighing and dimensioning taking place while the consignment was being moved through the depot.

These time savings mean that the freight operator can now check 100% of H&L consignments using less resource. In addition, the elimination of manual entry and the electronic audit trail provided by the system have reduced customer disputes and increased recoverable surcharges by 15% - generating thousands of pounds per week in additional revenue.

The successful implementation of the RPS has earned us a nomination for the Global Freight Awards in the Product Innovation category.

Wish us luck!

1st October 2018

Avery Weigh-Tronix is one of the world’s leading suppliers of weighing scales, systems and equipment.

We offer a wide range of industrial weighing systems and solutions, backed by an extensive service network across the entire UK.

Part of a large corporate family, with 200 years experience, we market and service our products in over 80 countries across the globe.